Celebrating its diamond jubilee during the car-crazy weekend wrapped around the annual Pebble Beach Concours d’Elegance, in central California, Jaguar Cars introduced not one but two special editions, the XJ Supersport sedan and the XKR175 coupe, both powered by the most powerful V8 engines the company has ever produced, with chassis modifications and décor to match.

The heart of the XJ Supersport is a supercharged V8 that Jaguar introduced for 2010. It generates 510 horsepower and 461 foot-pounds of torque. Significantly, the new model marks a shift away from previous Jaguar nomenclature, where top-performance models were marked with the –R designation, as with the XF-R and XK-R models.

The Supersport’s 4-cam 32-valve engine is mated to a fully electronically controlled ZF 6-speed automatic transmission with paddle shifters on the steering wheel. The console-mounted shifter knob includes a Sport setting, and the console has a checkered-flag button that, when pushed, changes engine, transmission, traction control, and suspension settings for maximum performance. It also changes the entire gauge cluster from white to red.

Subscribe - It's Free!

The Supersport comes loaded to the gills with leather, wood, luxury items and special appearance items, including red center caps on its alloy wheels and a Supersport fender badge. The Supersport package includes 20-inch Mataiva wheels and high-performance tires, automatic cruise control with forward alert, adaptive dynamics, continuously variable shock absorbers, and a different emergency brake assist calibration. The Supersport, with its aluminum-intensive body construction, weighs only 4281 pounds, and the slick body measures a drag coefficient of only 0.29 in the wind tunnel.